Portal
by Telaka M
Summary: The greatest X-File that never was.
1. Prologue, 1998

_**Portal**_

**_._**

_Prologue_

He stood amongst them, like a centrepiece, a termagant amongst insidious men.

Plumes of amorphous silver-grey smoke curled loosely around his silent, barren face, over his severe, impersonal eyes. His was an impression of aesthetic displeasure as his lips tightened in a wry grimace, as he listened silently to the report and watched his fellow players jar and shuffle in their positions around him. None had come to be amused, and none dared to venture at responsibility or blame, yet.

And here was how he knew that this was all just a tragedy, in the way that classics are tragedies, in the way history is known. For they were their own undoing, as they played their games in the shadows and refused each other's true identity because of covert pride and paranoia, and so they condemned themselves to the failings of mutiny in a future that might not be so far away as to be safe anymore.

Soon they would begin impugning, soon or not far after that (perhaps it already was) they would begin to deal behind the shadows of the shadows, out with the circle, in with the enemies of their enemies' enemies.

When such a time came, he would watch them crumble, each one of them, till he alone remained to have it all. Take it, and send it back to the hell where this whole miserable mess belonged.

"Well?" he was asked by one gentleman in the back, because despite the Smoking Man's indicting displeasure it had been his agent this time and they had all been sure, because of his cockiness, success after a domino line of failures. It had not been so. They passed the letter that informed them as much round through the lavish room, to burden for sure each other with the fact.

"Well. Now we find another avenue to drive down."

He drew from his cigarette again, savoured very little of it, and let the ashen breath tumble from his dry, yellow lips, settling back to an expressionless demeanour that was almost a tease. He wanted no part in a game of glib script; so often they reverted to it when matters began to haunt them with frustration and proceedings slowed to finger-pointing accusations.

"What other avenues?"

Again the question came from the back of the room, carefully asked but not shy of impertinence, for there was more than just one of them in this place right now, full of powerful, well played men, who disagreed with the Smoking Man's words.

"Are we all so pious of ourselves that we cannot accept there may be other factions out there whose covert operations are beyond our reach, our knowledge and understanding?"

Another of them, from a seat in front of him, countered. "Nothing is beyond those who set out to govern all as all should be governed. Let one matter slip, and the consequences could be catastrophic. Let a whole organization go by us unchecked..."

"They have the blessing of the president, of that we do know."

"More than that men; they have the _technology_..."

All different voices talking now, all moot points when held against the fact that they had not been able to infiltrate even one agent inside. They had no eyes and ears watching and listening where it really mattered. What information they did have was whey; secondary sources, hearsay, conspiracy and some names with black holes in their records that it seemed no amount of digging could fill.

They had a well paid photographer out in the field, as it were, tailing one of the names, but a few non-descript photographs of a by-in-large plain, blonde woman buying chain store coffee was leading them nowhere. The results were nothing but strained desperation for the tangible. The irony was humiliating.

Yet now, as he smoked, indulging in such a drudgery habit, and watched his fellows grunt and exasperate, he found that desperate avenue he had begun to conceive in his head to be more and more prominent in possibility.

He waited through some whispering, some rustling at the back, the bristling of expensive suits at his side and more shivers of discontent. In another life he might have smiled knowing what scandal of a proposition he was about to let loose amongst them, but now he only side stepped in a way as to be noticed and lowered his cigarette.

"Perhaps it is not a spy we should be employing."

He welcomed the hush as he spoke, and carried on quietly.

"Not always does an investigator use his own eyes and ears to search, but wily employs the unwitting to look for him."

Still silence, heavy with expectancy.

"If what we believe to be true is, and the mountain complex in Colorado hides the portal to the rest of the universe, then surely the myth of it alone is the epiphany of any man's desire who has ever dared to dream of something more than this in his existence."

A sharp, angry intake of breath from the man sitting in front of him.

"_No_... Surly... To employ _Mulder?_ Is that what you suggest? The man whose every close encounter you have discredited so severely that even his own partner doubts his sanity at times, and certainly no one else around him, close to him, believes him?"

In a rare moment of expression, the Smoking Man raised an eyebrow. "Exactly. And why not? From your comfortable mantle behind your anonym, have you ever watched another man fight so hard and search and believe with such frightening blind faith as to never be unconvinced of what we make seem so unconvincing? Have you ever had another man come so close to biting your fingers off in order for the truth? Do not lie to me and say you have, for I haven't.

"Men, give the scented cloth to Mulder, and by hell and high water, I assure you he _will_ find the Stargate."

* * *

A.N: It is highly unlikely I will do any more with this story in the foreseeable future. Not through a lack of wanting, but through a more dismal lack of time. If you got this far though I hope you enjoyed the teaser and construstive critisism/reviewing is always appreciated.


	2. Chapter 1, Oxford 1983

_Disclaimer: _Because I always forget to put one in the first chapter for some reason... Hell no, I don't own either, not Carter's X-Files or Carter's SG-1...

...

_Chapter One_

_Oxford, 1983_

_._

It was a handsome day; the sky pastel and between seasons with a pale, silvery sun eloping through thin, fair clouds. Barely a wind to disturb us and the odd scrap of foliage turned a bold red or striking auburn. Through a window he saw it by slivers, and then he turned and looked away in a sulk.

What time did he have to gaze when he was suffering a dismal beginning to the beginning of the end? Oxford, the start of greatness begged through every ancient brick and for it he had no passion. Only a vague hankering for home that he could barely explain and a feeling – for the first time in his young adult life – that he had dive-bombed way in over his arrogant, American head.

Lunch remained untouched, much like his books, his notepads, his ambitions, and he stared listlessly at the table, alone in all senses. Perhaps he should just have stayed and joined the Massachusetts State Police. At least in that decision there would have been courage in deifying his father's wishes, which remained something of a dormant ambition in the young Mulder-boy. Yet at twenty-two and from a ridged home, the parental law still seemed somehow infallible.

Fox (though he was already debating having himself known by his surname) dragged a blunt fingernail across the deep varnished wood of the hall's furniture. Typical that even in its lunch room the school should reek of history. It unnerved his ego, to be humbled by a feeling of archaic heritage that his native country would never have if always placed in comparison to this tiny island.

Maybe though, if he adopted a course of blind faith, he could survive—

A heavy thud snapped him back to reality with a blue curse; a pile of musty library books, utterly in contrast to Fox's fresh, store-bought reading list, fell inches from his fingers, and, it seemed, by no accident. Fox scowled (in the angry arrogance of discovering adult youth he had decided he was not here, 3000 miles from home, to make friends) and adamantly shoved the books aside with his scrappy elbow. Such social defiance was challenged with a short, sincere laugh.

The culprit was a fidgety man about Fox's age, skinny as a strip of bark and not so tall as Fox's eloquent, approximate six foot. Yet he was dressed sharper than the best of society and stared with canny, humorous eyes straight and eagerly at the man whose solitude he now disturbed by sitting down uninvited across from him.

"Don't fuss," he cracked in a smooth British accent, with a sort of wry pull at the corner of his mouth passing as a smile, "You won't make it past the first week if you sit on your own and sulk like that, the over-thinking will kill you. Here—" He slid his peace offering across the table, a half finished packet of brazil nuts and the oddest offering for an alliance Fox had ever been presented with. In lieu, he took one.

"Thanks," he conceded, chewing thoughtfully.

The other man shrugged. "You're the first person to take one. Figures." But he seemed relieved, and so he struck out an immaculate, tanned hand. "Colson. Alec Colson. Call me either one you like."

Fox tilted his head, decided he envied – like so many – the question-less simplicity of this man's name, and then shook his hand. "Fox Mulder."

Alec said nothing of it. He was only happy to finally have a friend in this wretched, old place.

...

_Three months later_

Mulder was broken from his work by an assembly of cheap, techno-coloured paper which was thrust under his buried nose, and not so oddly for him it was a kind of interruption he was becoming entirely used to. Like the excited finger now jabbing frantically at something Mulder was sure was meant to be a thing in particular, at an article he dared to guess, as he saw haphazard columns of words on the newsprint paper in front of him.

Yet even as the notes from his studies began to slip from his mind's grasp and the last ten minutes of psychological conjecturing became a smudge of speculation, he could feel a familiar guilty pleasure of excitement roiling in his belly, a moment of undeniable curiosity spreading through the muscles of his mind. He allowed his fingers to go slack and drop his pen as Colson swung into a seat across from his at the wide library table.

"Three months mate, of digging through back-catalogues, trolling around every hidden apothecary this fair city has to give, asking every God-damned bohemia on the street, but here it is Mulder. _Here_ is the undeniable truth."

It was a small phrase that he was not to know would haunt his life to come, and so it was with naive enthuse that Mulder bundled up the magazine into his hands and begun to read.

It was a Canadian-published hippie fanzine from the 60s – Fall of 1969 in fact, Mulder quickly checked the front page – and had a quaint air of amateurism on every page typical of a fanzine. With spelling errors, clashing fonts, rusty staples and a none-conformed layout, it was nonetheless a ripe vine of festival dates, arts and crafts fairs, vegetarian recipes, hemp patterns and sporadic but enthusiastic interviews from anyone and everyone/thing hippy, it seemed. And here, on the middle pages that Colson had presented specifically to Mulder, spoke a couple famed only as 'Michael and Jenny' who revelled to a reporter about their journey that summer up to Woodstock.

Mulder's eyes paused and Colson – whose brilliance for business amongst many other things Mulder had come to envy in the past several months – hung forward eagerly, desperate for his comrade's opinion. Eventually, after reading about a few most psychedelic trips and the best mellow-parties in America in the day, Mulder reached the part of the interview he guessed his friend was waiting for him to:

.

_Jenny – "We picked up four hitchhikers in Colorado. At first we thought, well, they looked... military. But one of them was a woman. And then they asked us if we could take them to New York, you know, instead of back to the missile base they have stored in the Cheyenne Mountains. And then..."_

_Michael – "People, they say, y'know – when they 'believe' and that – they say they believe because of lights in the sky, or photographs of spinnin' disks in the dark, or what... what is it with the Roswell thing— Yeah, 'little green men'._

"_But it's just all more lies man, everything is lies, even the lies! They ain't green, they weren't even little. They're _us! _The hitchhikers, they were aliens..._"

_Jenny – "Well, they looked like us, is the thing. _Exactly_ like us. Like humans. One of them, he even wore glasses. Just like the ones my kid brother used to wear, in fact... And he was the nicest man."_

_Michael – "But we can't tell you their names. Or their home planet, no. There's things you don't betray, y'know? But they're out there is the point. I mean, these guys, they had things that did things like you wouldn't believe. Totally... out of this world, man. By my eyes they were real and we just gotta keep believing! Believe in peace, in reaching out instead of striking out. In talking instead of shooting. Then—then they'll come back..."_

_._

Mulder kept his lips tight as he read the article again. The man's words especially sounded so full of blind faith it was hard to find a moment of blunder. He corroborated his own story perfectly, never contradicting his loose told facts, never stepping over his other-half's verifications. Mulder believed that Jenny and Michael believed entirely what they had to tell the magazine's reporter, but the magazine never revealed a bias as to whether or not it believed in turn.

Mulder carefully folded the fanzine and placed it back down. He considered Colson with a straight look, measuring the brimming excitement in the man's eyes that he so desperately wanted to share. But he was, simply through a slice more experience, wary.

"This doesn't actually say much, Colson. He says— Michael I mean, says what, that there were four of them, 'hitchhiking' apparently, and Jenny says they looked human but they both say they were aliens, looking for a ride to New York? For what, the pretzels?"

Colson offered his trademark wry corner smile. "They say they saw things, that the 'aliens' were carrying things 'out of this world'."

"What, lemon spiced marijuana? Colson—"

"Mulder, you know there's more to this than just those words being words. You know this is the crux of the whole matter. I mean, take the fact they picked them up in _Colorado— _don't tell me that's just a coincidence."

Mulder harboured a nasty scowl from a fellow student sitting astride him, and so in a rush gathered up his books before grabbing Colson's arm and sending them out into the halls. They began with unspoken consent towards the dining hall.

Colson began waving the magazine in front of them as he spoke with fervent conviction.

"We both know Roswell's just the meat they dangle to satisfy the curious masses. So we both agreed to take a different lead on the whole conspiracy and everything said in this paper by these people corroborates what we've found out so far! The military base in Colorado, the unconvincing public enquiries into the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, which all seems to lead back to these mysterious archaeological digs in Giza in the 20s. Mulder? Mulder—come on! I know you want to believe this!"

They ducked into the lunch hall together, half empty with only fifteen minutes left till classes resumed.

"Course I do, Colson." He sat down at a deserted table and dug a half demolished packet of Maltesers from his blazer pocket. He threw them onto the table and between them they began to pick hungrily. They shared many bad habits, and skipping lunch was one of them.

"It's just... Well they were a couple of hippies Alec. What's the bet they were wasted the whole trip on pot brownies. It's more a wonder they didn't invent a more radical hallucination of aliens than 'they looked exactly like us'."

Colson laughed bitterly. "C'mon_._ That's not the point and you know it. It's how this interview corroborates with everything else. Look, _Fox._"

Mulder scowled; Colson knew perfectly well how to draw his attention, if not for the worse sometimes.

"You're onto a good thing with Cheyenne, Mulder. I think you might have something. The military, it makes sense. Containment, control. And somewhere as deep and inconspicuous as an Air Force mountain complex in a state as unassuming as Colorado. So what if— Mulder listen, what if these humanoid aliens came _from_ Cheyenne. What if they'd escaped. God they could even have come from Roswell and been taken up there, out of the spot light if you will. It makes sense. And for now, _this_," Colson waved the magazine tauntingly before Mulder's nose, "this is all the proof _we_ should need. To keep going."

Mulder pawed absently-mindedly at the corner of one of his books. He was in a very deliberate effort trying not to look directly at Colson or his magazine.

"Mulder what are you afraid of? Why won't you tell me what is it that keeps stopping you, every time we get a little closer like this?"

Of course, Colson did not hear an answer. Never did he, and it berated the young engineer's flaunty, spirited character in a way few people could.

"Look, if the military are planning _anything_ to do with technologies and biology that don't belong from this planet, they could end up killing us all. At the very least we all have a right to know before they decimate the planet!"

Colson's relentlessness was less to do with youth than his own personal agenda; his father's disgraced name and his family's soured reputation thus. He hardly expressed it but he was sensitive to the idea of such shadows hanging over what he voraciously believed was not only his family's innocence but also his business to defend the public's rights. Mulder admired and envied his plight. It was, rather romantically, a noble, selfless cause. Unlike his own guilt-ridden motivation.

"Of course," he finally offered to Colson's rant. "Of course they owe us the truth but Alec, we can't always charge ahead on each tiny scrap of new information we find. This interview," Mulder casually waved a hand at the fanzine still clutched in Colson's hand, "is aloof at best, and an unwitting lie at worst. I'd say, treat it as coincidence, if you're going to treat it all. And in the mean time..." Mulder rapped his fingers against his thick pile of books, "We've got midterms."


	3. Chapter 2, California 1992

_Chapter Two _

_California, 1992_

_.  
_

So much grandeur and gild and deliberate interior flurry, and yet none of it felt anywhere akin to the regal demeanour of the archaic Oxford halls which a small, denying part of him longed to return to; but this country had to try somewhere, if only for the pride and satisfaction of a false sense of patriotic history. Mulder scoured the tall, breezy entranceway to the University of California, Berkeley with only professional curtsey, shrugged off help from a wizen security guard with a weak smile and carried on straight, by instinct.

He wasn't afraid to admit these were bitter days for himself and his stumbling, infant career, and that they were lonely days, and that if nothing else this weekend trip was in search of the rare and too often in-vain – like-mindedness. Even if just for an afternoon relief.

Never a sense of quiet habited these halls, but always the familiar murmur of coupled footsteps and the haughty laugh of academics, or the spill and cuss of paper from an overloaded arm or small-stepped running caused by those late or banished to a menial quest by tyrant lecturers. Mulder knew it well, and did not hate it.

He came to a stop outside a plain wooden door, one of any number stapled into the walls of these long halls, and read its stainless steel number carefully as if deciphering code. It was quiet from the outside, the lecture had not started yet which meant he had achieved the rare in himself – he was on time. He stepped in without fanfare to the fact and quietly took a seat in the back.

He'd have been generous to say the place was a quarter full with unoptimistic tweet suits and pencil skirts and he could practically pallet the salt of pre-empted disapproval. Tasted about right. Lent the room a modest foreboding.

The podium below was empty. Mulder had come with his own notes and photocopies but there hadn't even been a leaflet at reception on the matter – only a black pin board propped hastily outside with a lopsided display of plastic white letters spelling the lecturer's name and his topic: '_The Old Kingdom and the IV__th __ Dynasty'._ Mulder was well aware of the subtitle that had been coyly omitted from the heading.

He took his time surveying the rest of the audience. A few old, grey faces he fancied he recognised from Oxford (but maybe it was just that after so many years institutionalised, one rusty, bearded professor began to look like all the rest.) A few younger shoulders sat straight and eager but Mulder recognised the misled from a mile away. Most sat in pairs, even small groups and a handful sat alone filling up empty seats around the front or, like himself, wedged firmly in the back.

A familiar scent reached his nose then, and he turned towards it, mildly surprised. Someone was smoking in the first row, a man, maybe twenty, twenty-five years older than him, hunched into a rusty brown overcoat and holding quite still apart from the arc of his arm which went from his mouth which Mulder could not see, to his knee, then back to his mouth in a rhythmic smoking pattern. If he had seen the scowling disapproval he was attracting from the other attendants then he was content to be oblivious to their cause. Mulder ignored him and concentrated on his notes.

It was a quarter past the hour before the lecturer showed up, entirely self-aware of his tardiness with an embarrassed flush in his cheeks and a bright red to his lips that suggested he had burned himself on the coffee he held in his hand. Probably gulped it in the taxi on the way over, Mulder observed off-handed. He abandoned his many spilling folders and books and bags in dismal disarray upon the side table on the podium and shrugged off his ill-beaten parker, all the while apologising to an agitated and as yet to be impressed room. Mulder felt genuine pity, and even more, admiration.

"Ah yes, _yes_ sorry! Sorry, it's just, well my landlady— ah, her cat in fact... But of course, that's not what you came to hear about. That's not— _so..."_

The floppy-haired man – had to be younger than Mulder by at least a handful of years – turned so abruptly towards the blackboard that Mulder flinched, and was wholly surprised when he _didn't_ fall across the stage as he tripped on his own twisted feet, but recovered somehow miraculously with a stump of chalk in his hand.

"So," he repeated with a little more composure, and a vigour in his eyes behind his wide rimmed glasses that gave Mulder further cause for interest. He had known that vigour before in another man, in Colson, and it had always meant something spectacular, if not entirely believable.

"Let's begin with a surmise of what many of you probably already agree upon to be the anthropological cornerstones of this particular time period within the IVth Dynasty, focusing specifically on, of course, the architecture and _tools_ of the time, which _actually_ I believe strongly contradict each other in terms of sophistication and longevity..."

The man rushed his audience with a babble that was less nervous the more it became animated by passion and conviction, the more he became self-involved in flaunting his work. He portrayed a watertight argument, and never once harboured a shade of self-doubt in his sharp, darting eyes. But for all the bad intents of first impressions, he was a drab, desperate looking man with thick, unkempt ear-length hair and a baubled swamp green cardigan that might have belonged to his great, great grandfather in better days. Mulder could smell the mothballs and caffeine off him even in the back and see the constant, slight shake in his hands, like he was in withdrawal. He spoke of himself with pitiful, wordless openness because he moved as if he was self conscious of everything – or everything except his failing argument it seemed.

"So you see, it just wouldn't have been possible, what with populous versus demand, and tools versus architecture, not within such a constricted timeframe, and unless you want to start blaming carbon dating, which actually, now that I come to mention it—"

The first man finally stood up and walked out. After that it became like an open invitation. It was painful to watch, but Mulder kept a tight vigil.

By the intended end of the talk five of his audience remained, and three of them hurried out when the lecturer invited questions. The smoking man in the front stood up slowly, and made his exit without haste, extending a polite nod before he left. Leaving Mulder and Doctor Daniel Jackson alone, finally.

Mulder felt a half smile tug at the corners of his resilient lips. The archaeologist and linguistics doctor seemed not to realise he had one member of audience left as he turned away and began to murmur indecipherably to himself, gathering up his books and fussily shoving rogue sheets of paper into any folder he could force open enough to take them. There was a moment where he paused, hand on the board eraser, readying to wipe his chalk illustrations clean for the next class. And then his shoulders dropped, and his books and folders began to slip from under his arm—

"Hey."

Mulder stood. His sudden declaration of presence made the doctor jump, and his papers scattered like they were flying for freedom.

"Hey, let me help..."

Mulder jogged down to the front, grabbing a couple of sheets as he came forward and in one fluid arc straightened and extended his arm to shake hands. Doctor Jackson stared for a moment, holding a beat of silence in which he scrunched his face as if thinking confusedly, then met Mulder's eyes warily.

"Sorry, hi," he shook his hand briefly. His palms were cold and sweaty. "Em... Can I help you? If you're wondering about the next class, I don't know anything about it, I don't actually teach here..."

Mulder looked at the loose papers he had picked up in his hand. He raised an eyebrow and this time allowed a longer smile.

"_The Pyramids Under Theories of a Third Kind_. Well that' s— Has more of a ring to it than_ The Old Kingdom and the IV__th __ Dynasty _ anyway, if you don't mind me saying."

The Doctor's eyes widened briefly as he saw the type in Mulder's hands, and without grace snatched them back.

"Please..." he began as he combed a hand through his straw textured hair and shrugged. "It's, that's personal, just..."

"Just some theory you've been working on. On how _aliens_ built the pyramids, and then transported them here on interstellar cruise ships, leaving them behind eventually to be used again as landing platforms for future visits through their galactic territories. A theory that would have been the crux of your argument today, if anyone had been listening. But no one wants to hear it; why listen to a rewrite of history when it sounds just fine as it is. No aliens, no boogiemen, just those Egyptians and their crazy slaves, building the impossible in ways we could never imagine..."

Daniel made an effort to shut up his jaw, stalled a response and then slowly frowned, cocking his head slightly to one side.

"Are you taking the piss? Because, well to be quite honest I get enough of that from my landlady and her cat never mind some stranger in a snazzy suit who's obviously done enough digging to be called somewhat obsessive, and besides—"

"I believe you." Mulder sat back down and invited Doctor Jackson to do the same.

"You... What? _Seriously_?"

Mulder nodded, half shrugged. "You think you're the only conspiracy theorist out there with half a shred of sanity left to still take himself seriously? I came here today to listen to your lecture. And now I want the official follow up."

The door opened nosily. Young weekend students began spilling in, oblivious of the two men but entirely aware of making as much noise through gossip and music and laughter as possible. Daniel shovelled up the last of his books in a rush of refigured enthusiasm.

"I know a coffee house around the corner. Come on."

...........

Daniel ate sparingly at the watery eggs on his plate, but drank copiously from the coffee pot making its rounds in the hands of a rough young thing every fifteen minutes or so. Mulder knew of well addictive personalities from basic behavioural psychology training, and found it a wonder this man, in his desperateness and solitude, hadn't dug himself a hole somewhere to spend the rest of his life on drugs.

"You okay with those fries?"

Mulder snapped out of the analogy, tried to face the man with a polite smile and refocus. The remains of his lunch were been watched with insufferable intensity, like a dog trained on a handful of chicken, only through wide rimmed glasses which covered very human, very wide blue eyes.

Mulder gave him a wave, a _sure, have as many as you want_ shrug, and Daniel did not need a second invitation. Mulder took it as no coincidence he'd ordered the cheapest hellish thing on the menu. It couldn't pay well, weekend lecturing and unpublished papers.

"Why aliens?" Mulder began again carefully. He had told Daniel as much that he was a collector of UFO photographs and the stories that went with them. Took weekends off once a month or so to go across states writing journal entries on people's third kind encounters, lores of cattle mutilations on their farms, crop circles, anything and everything that had become a joke within the media. It was not untrue, but Mulder saw no need to tell this flighty man he was also FBI, about the X-Files – it would achieve nothing but a shut mouth.

Daniel chewed hurriedly around a mouthful of fries, stuffing them in like Mulder was going to deny him them at any moment of sudden pleasurable cruelty. Bullied heavily at some point – but who hadn't been. Finally he swallowed and laid his hands down so he could lean in a little. The vigour that had subsided with every person who had walked out his lecture returned, but warily.

"Why _not_ aliens? Who's to say logic is any sort of understanding other than just one _type_ of understanding. History, history is a miracle of coincidence; language is, is a human invention so finite in its possibility of origin, in the same way every individual human being is, that it's actually no wonder people turn to the divine to understand things. I have the evidence to suggest that a large part of what we think we know about Egyptology is wrong, too many contributing factors are just made impossible when grouped together, and it's a matter of applying a different logic to help solve those misgivings. Aliens, boogiemen, whatever you want to call them, it's a theory all the same as the rest, only it makes the most sense because it makes no sense at all. There is no hard evidence other than coincidence, and sense. Explain the unexplained by using the unexplainable. You see?"

Mulder tipped his head to the side, feigned ignorance, but inside he boiled with an excitement he hadn't enjoyed in almost a year now, not since Diana had left the X-Files...

"Okay, well take these eggs," and here Daniel waved his hands over the plate of grey, scrambled half-substance topped by a thin slice of burnt toast that he had gamily taken two buttered bites from. "I can understand they look and taste like vomit because pre-empted logic dictates the chef is either terrible or the eggs are of poor quality or the pan is dirty or they're old eggs made an hour ago, or the waiter spat in them and so on. There's any number of possibilities that could explain the history of these eggs, and none of them are right. I wasn't there when they were made so I'll never know. In that case, how is it any stranger to claim that, that a _dog_ made them, or indeed aliens. In fact the evidence of aliens making these eggs is all the more convincing because there is no pre-emptive logic to the theory. It is entirely up to speculation and even imagination. Which, in the academic world, is a sorely lacking concept..."

Daniel bowed his head and scratched behind his ears and wore a sheepish smile that wasn't just a little pained.

"And asides from a lack of imagination on the audience's part, I'm forced to conceit that my theory is so full of holes it's actually in worse shape than my wardrobe, which might be a funny thing to say, if it wasn't so pathetically true."

The waitress stalked by again and this time refilled Daniel's mug without being asked. He thanked her hastily as she walked on, all hips, heels and bad attitude.

"Well if you were sailing on it you'd be sunk by now, I'll agree, but Doctor Jackson, I envy your work."

The coffee mug paused on his lips, its steam fogging half his glasses. He took them off and Mulder saw a stronger face for it. Potential, if he could find a place for it to be recognised.

"It's honest and it's imaginative and its internal logic is quite frankly beautiful. Very... Greek."

The younger man beamed. He could hardly help it, having been starved of gratitude and admiration for most his life, and it seemed to hurt him, to feel so pleased and yet so vulnerable.

Mulder leaned into the table slightly, as now was his time to feel personally exposed when he asked, "Do you think... there's any possibility that aliens remain close to us now, watching us like you supposed they did in Antiquity?"

Daniel chose carefully to lean further in as well as he dropped the volume of his voice a few notches. "Maybe... I've not—it hasn't occurred to me to look into it. To think about it further that way. Default of being an archaeologist – you're head stays in the past."

Spoken like an apology and Mulder accepted it with a slight nod. He reached into the breast of his coat hanging over the back of his chair and when he extended his arm back out Daniel flinched from it. A habitual, gut reaction. Mulder politely ignored it.

"Here's my card."

Daniel took it carefully and inspected it. "Snazzy," he joked, reading only Mulder's name and mobile contact number in plain black ink on plain white paper. "Fox."

"Please, Mulder's fine."

Daniel nodded, understood better than most probably.

"Can I ask, maybe for a copy of some of your notes?"

Daniel leaned back again and put his glasses on. Mulder watched his shoulders stiffen, his nose crease and his hand slide protectively over the cover of one of his folders. "I'm afraid—"

But Mulder put up his hand to signal complete understanding.

"It's nothing personal. It's just... for all it isn't, my work is all I have."

They reflected on that together, the sad, mutual fact of it. Then a shadow came to loom over them.

"Y' want the bill now sweethearts?"

After they had paid, and after Mulder finally drew a business card from the man, they parted at the corner, Mulder towards his hotel and Daniel to his car. The next time Mulder tried to contact him, it appeared like he'd dropped off the face of the Earth.

.

A.N: A little side note to say a lot of the characterisation of Daniel in this chapter was inspired by Julie Fortune's portral of him in her SG-1 novel _Sacrifice Moon_. She tells a very good early-series Daniel and I'd recommend the book on it if you haven't already given it a read. Not the best of the _Fandemonium _series, in my opinion, but a good character read all the same.


	4. Chapter 3, Washington DC 1998

A.N: This chapter takes places two weeks after the end of _The X-Files: Fight the Future_.

...

_Chapter Three_

_ Washington D.C., 1998_

.

The night time – for those inflicted by superstitious inclining – was the time for business. The opportune period for under-the-nose observations and classic spy talk. A time to feel comfortable in a paranoid mind.

Old fashioned, elite, and indifferent in condition; if it was all of these things to conduct trade under the moon, then the Lone Gunmen were guilty souls, and happy ones. It excited them, amused them and drove them to live and work under the guise of bad Hollywood cliques – and so far they remained free thinking men.

Now it was comfortably into the small hours after midnight and movement had occurred on their surveillance feed, the one covering their front door.

"I'd know that nose from ten blocks away," Langly grinned wolfishly, leaning gamely back in his office standard chair. "Dare we let him wait, boys?"

Byers sniffed. "Of course. Everyone should at least knock first."

And Frohike tapped the small black and white screen keenly. "He's looking... perkier, since last time we saw him."

All three nodded gravely in a trio of agreement.

The slow, deliberate knock resonated dully against the back wall, and lost all its emphasis travelling through and between all the junk and clutter piled within their covert office.

"He's alone," Frohike observed not with his usual harmless flippancy but with dark suspicion. "And the man himself doesn't seem all that peaked either." He was referring entirely to the absence of Scully.

"It doesn't mean anything, yet," Langly remarked solemnly as they left it to Byers to answer their kindred colleague.

The pitch-black morning was unforgivingly cold but Mulder hadn't cared to notice, it was rather irrelevant compared to the cold he had suffered and survived in just two weeks ago. But as Byers opened the door to him, he greeted his fellow agent of paranoia and conspiracy with unexpected candidness in his smile. He was, in fact, positively grinning.

"Boys," Mulder stepped in, sighing as he welcomed the relative warmth of being indoors all the same. "Good to see you again, and in more amiable circumstances. Here." Mulder strolled around the cabinets and computers with practiced ease and slyly dropped a thick brown envelope into Langly's lap as he took off his overcoat.

"Take a sniff at that, gentlemen. And give me some good news about it."

Langly ripped the rather pristine, resealed envelope open with unchecked vigour, but behind him Frohike cocked his head and half glared at the FBI man.

"Mulder, dare we ask—"

"She's fine, Frohike. At least, Scully's as well as I am." He touched tenderly upon the thin red mark that temporarily scarred the side of his forehead. "Quick trip to the Antarctica and back and here I am again. Only she's managed to squeeze out an extra week's paid leave. Swears it was on Skinner's insistence – how's that for favouritism in the workplace?"

Despite the prim display of what they all suspected was a well rehearsed speech, the men nodded, satisfied. Where one conspiracy was likely never to be told again, Mulder had come to bring them another, and Mulder rarely failed to bring them something good.

Langly whistled, his eyes raking excitedly over the bold print title of a stapled stack of papers he'd pulled from the envelope.

"'_The Pyramids under Theories of a Third Kind.' _Not his best title but one of his best papers. Mulder, you're nothing if not original. Is this what you've decided to play with while the cat's away?"

Mulder laughed, quietly. He'd moved a stack of _National Geographics_ from one end of a couch and dropped himself into it. He put his feet up on a stool next to a black mug with a Yellow Happy Face on it and closed his eyes. His face was pale, unshaven and shadowed.

"So you know the work, and the author I take it. Well, this particular copy was left in that particular envelope in my inbox on my desk in my lovely basement office sometime between last night and this morning, when I wasn't there. Who left it I do not know, yet. The content of the paper's not new or revised, certainly it's the same version of the thesis I'd read six years ago. I think it may even have belonged to the author himself – check the third page and note the coffee ring on the bottom right hand corner. What do you know then of it already?"

All three looked up in a unison of ironic amusement.

"What do _we_ know of Dr Daniel Jackson and his work?" Byers voiced almost mockingly. "Only more fool him for ever going public in the academic world with his ideas. For ever trying to make a career out of widely regarded cock and bull."

"This man could have been our main spread writer," Frohike carried on. "He could have been famous and admired by his respected peers, like us."

Mulder raised an eyebrow without opening his eyes.

"But," Langly continued, "Instead he's a well regarded laughing stock and as far as we know – which is better than most – he's been AWOL for a year."

Mulder opened his eyes again and sat himself up, distractedly picking up a _National Geographic_ (noting with regard that it contained an article inside on speculations of Ancient Mayan spiritual culture) and then tossing it back into the pile without reading it.

"So he has some cult following?"

Byers nodded slowly, eyes straying to the ceiling and lips pursed as he considered this idea.

"I suppose. A handful of students mostly, from a few West coast colleges. Which does little to mend his reputation on any side. I'm not surprised he's being brought to your attention though – I imagine he'd be something of a kindred spirit, if you'd ever had the chance to meet him."

"I did."

The three started at once, fixing their gazes simultaneously onto Mulder, suspicious and at once, eventually, amused.

"You lucky dog," Langly admired, "I suppose you even managed to talk the man into having lunch and an informed discussion with you."

Mulder laughed.

"That would have been before he appeared to dropped off the face of the Earth then," Frohike murmured. "The whole situation reeks of military interference."

"Military?"

"The military make people disappear," Byres informed sagely. "The government only hire them to do it."

"But Daniel Jackson was a laughing stock _at best,_" Frohike stressed. "A handful of undistinguished college students and drop-outs were his strongest following. Where's the threat he posed in that? Where's the _use_ in disposing a man like that?"

"Because he was onto the truth, of course," Langly answered coolly. "Now, what's this?"

Langly pulled out another envelope, one within the envelope Mulder had handed him, and out of that extracted a handful of black and white photographs.

"_She's_ pretty," Frohike grinned as the three leaned over a set of images taken of a woman walking within a crowd leaving the main entrance of a university.

Mulder nodded, leaning forward now, hands clasped together to stop them twirling restlessly. He'd already spent the better part of this evening making careful copies and scanning these photographs to make digital files of the mysterious portfolio.

Though the colour was indistinguishable, her hair was light and meticulously cut back to within a couple of inches from her scalp. She appeared a good height against the stuffy academics that surrounded her, distinguishable in relatively casual wear and with a much keener and younger expression than any of the forgettable men walking around her. In none of the photos did she seem to be in liaison with anyone around her; she was alone in the crowd.

There were no dates on the photographs and as far as Mulder had tried, she was impossible to identify against any records within the FBI.

"Anyone you know already?"

"No," Byers quickly confirmed for him and all of them, "But I wouldn't be surprised if she was leaving one of Dr Jackson's lectures. Look where they are."

Mulder nodded again. They had spotted the plaque in one of the images identifying the university as the University of California, Berkeley campus. "I figured that was the connection. She doesn't look like a student – too old – and she doesn't seem the professor type. But with a haircut like that, possible military?"

The three men nodded slowly, though none of them liked to generalise like this so quickly.

"It's a start." Byers admitted cautiously, "There's certainly enough information on Dr Jackson if you know where to look, to start cross-referencing ideas."

Mulder stood up, satisfied that the men had caught the scent. He took the copy of the _National Geographic_ with him. "Good. I want to know who she is and what city I can meet up with her in. I want a tight excuse to invite her out for a coffee. If she's written papers, send me them. If she's got a famous uncle, a golden retriever, if she used to study painting as a hobby – I want to speak to that woman and I want to know if she killed Daniel Jackson."

He headed for the door.

"Mulder," Frohike stopped him before he'd put a hand on the door handle.

"Was he a friend of yours?"

Mulder opened the door and stepped outside. "He could have been."

...

6.03 am. It was dangerously early. But he had brought doughnuts and coffee and a fresh new conspiracy to share, right off the back burner. A fresh start on an old haunt. So he knocked and waited insistently outside her apartment door, filled more with keenness and not so much with the coyness he should have been feeling as a guilty man.

She answered after two minutes. He wouldn't have come early like this if he didn't know her the way he did – if he didn't have an understanding of her better than she might even realise.

He pushed the doughnuts ahead of himself and waved the cardboard cup holder with the coffees in it, and smiled slyly.

She glared at him for a moment, standing stalk still in her dressing gown and furry slippers with her hair cocked up at one side and her cheeks flushed. Then she turned silently and left the door open behind her.

"Mulder," she grunted as way of a hello and walked straight back into her bedroom.

He made himself at home, carrying the breakfast-come-peace offering to the couch with him and, shoes off and feet on the coffee table, snatched a Boston cream and unrolled the _National Geographic_ from his coat pocket.

Half an hour later she joined him. Hair tamed, dressed and, despite recent dramas, looking healthier and more refreshed than he did. Just like any other time.

Scully stood over him, taking a powdered doughnut for herself and watching him expectantly.

"Well?"

Mulder looked up from the magazine innocently, almost dumbly, but smiling. "Well what?"

"It's six thirty Mulder, in the morning. And it's Saturday. What is it this time?"

He mock gasped. "Scully, you cut me. Can't a friend bring his friend some breakfast and good will?"

"Is this because you're still smarting over the paid leave that Skinner gave me? Because I've stated it a hundred times Mulder – I never wanted that time off."

Mulder's daft grin softened to a grateful smile and he beckoned the seat next to him, with the doughnuts between them. She sat and sniffed the cold coffee cautiously.

"Be honest with me this time, Scully. How are you?"

For a moment she ate silently and thoughtfully. She looked him in the eye with some difficulty, it being her pride that jabbed her conscience. It unnerved her, the way it was impossible to fool him. Unnerved her, and reassured her at once.

"Better," she finally admitted. Which was as close to the truth as he was likely to get. So Mulder picked up her coffee for her and went into the kitchen to heat it up in the microwave.

"So, I've got a new case."

Scully pawed at another doughnut, resisting sadly. "Yeah?"

"New as in the man disappeared a year ago, and I once visited a lecture he was giving six years ago."

Scully raised an eyebrow, still looking at the box of sugars and creams.

"He is, or perhaps _was_, an academic; a linguist and an archaeologist specialising in Egyptology. He had a theory—Scully, just take another doughnut."

Mulder had opened her fridge. He didn't like what he spied – tofu and plain yogurt being the fads of the week it seemed. Then the microwave chimed and he carried the coffee back to the living room.

"He had a theory that perhaps the pyramids of Egypt were used not just as burial chambers – for instance – but also as landing pads for alien spacecrafts."

The second doughnut that had been halfway to Scully's mouth stopped. Slowly she diverted her gaze to Mulder as he sat back down, and carefully she kept her lips straight. She said nothing and Mulder continued, unperturbed.

"He's been missing for a year now, and yesterday morning a folder turned up in my inbox on my desk with a copy of his thesis from six years ago, the one I went to see the accompanying lecture on, and a portfolio of black and white photographs depicting a woman I haven't managed to identify yet. She's shown to be leaving the same university in California that the missing man lectured at. I visited Byers and the guys last night to pass on what I had and they're trying to identify her now."

Scully sipped the coffee from the paper cup. It was bitter and surprisingly welcoming.

"And you don't know who left this folder on your desk. Did you know this—"

"Jackson. Dr Daniel Jackson."

"Right. Did you know he was missing before now?"

"Well he hadn't been replying to my messages for six years, so I had an inkling. But then I thought maybe it's because he's a recluse."

Scully looked at him pointedly.

"I'm not a recluse."

She said nothing.

"Anyway," Mulder stole another doughnut. "I figured Skinner might let me away with an old missing persons case until you bring your butt back to work."

Scully eyed him sceptically. "I don't know Mulder. What have we learned already from following mysterious leads that turn up anonymously on your desk in the morning?"

She pointed at his forehead. He noted in turn the cold burns that still freckled her cheeks and a stab of deep, unresolved guilt hit at his gut.

"This one's all on me Scully. At least until you come back and nag me out of it."

She scoffed on a mouthful of cream and pastry. "Ha! Since when have I _ever_ turned you around on a case like this? I'll be back in the office first thing Monday, Skinner or no Skinner, and Mulder, _please_, in the meantime, take the rest of the weekend off."

He drank his coffee with his eyes down.

"That's not a request."

Request or not, she knew it would change nothing.

...

Sunday morning led him West. He caught an early flight and spent much of his time in the air denying his guilt. The guilt was fleeting at best, and more affiliated with what had happened two weeks ago than with what he was doing now. He told himself – with the possibility of federal kidnapping and being run off the road aside –he would be back in D.C. by Monday evening at the last. And Skinner would have as best a report as this agent could manage to compose whilst making it sound relevant to the job.

The weather barely held dry as Mulder slid into his rented Buick. As he drove the road to Colorado Springs under grey skies though he could deny nothing of the thrill he took from the chase, covert as that chase may be.

The files sat in the passenger seat. The guys had made relatively swift and decisive work of their search and tracked a name to the face – a one Captain Samantha Carter. Military, in fact Air Force no less. With a post in deep space telemetry in affiliation with NASA. Mulder was still undecided whether he wanted to believe this or not. Byers had assured him that her record was suspiciously bare for someone who had – if nothing else through hearsay – a notorious reputation for her fierce intelligence, almost unrivalled by her peers.

Still, he'd managed to arrange a date.

It had surprised him as much as he was sure it would surprise Scully when he got the chance to fill her non-delighted face in on the details. One phone call, gushing with coy admiration concerning her Ph.D. thesis; a brief and deliberately vague explanation that he himself was about to embark on funding for his own Ph.D. based on arguments within a similar area relating to theoretical astrophysics; an amiable request to meet for coffee, considering after all he would be in town anyway tomorrow afternoon, and with little questions asked she had told him to meet her on the corner of Main and Colorado – he'd recognise which coffee shop she meant when he got there – because surprise, surprise she had the afternoon off (apparently weekends weren't a thing where a job in deep space telemetry was concerned.)

She had sounded strikingly young, and Mulder mused along the drive whether the photos he had of this Carter woman were indeed as recent as a year old. Yet for her to be in her mid-twenties like he now assumed, seemed ludicrous considering she had also made it to the rank of Captain in the Air Force, it appeared in her spare time off from working with NASA. Mulder was beginning to see where Byers, Frohike and Langly had grounded their suspicions.

It was raining when he parked the Buick half a block away. He watched the door of the coffee shop for twenty minutes through the haze of the modest downpour. People ran in under newspapers and twisted umbrellas, and ran out again with swift purpose to make it to cars and bus stop shelters. A town and its people like any other.

Eventually he made good of the time (fifteen minutes to spare) and headed out.

She was waiting for him. Set up in the back corner and watching patiently out at the window, she turned as he walked in and stared straight at him.

Mulder caught himself shy of betraying to her any expression of real shock. He smiled tightly, like one smiles nervously in admiration, and queued at the counter first, idly counting the cakes, smelling the coffee, regaining his regular heartbeat.

By the time he slid into the booth across from her, he was positively the face of an innocent admirer again.

"Captain Samantha Carter." He extended his hand and she shook it thoroughly, nodding. Despite her unnerving calm, she had a soft, yielding gaze that was curious before anything else. She even smiled.

"Special Agent Fox William Mulder. A pleasure."

Mulder froze. An instinctive smile twisted his lips, a defence by trying to look coy and unknowing, but the woman sitting across from him was unflinching. Damn, she was near laughing at him.

"I understand you're here to discuss a paper, but not my own. I don't blame you really; my own Ph.D. supervisor struggled to understand the research proposals I put forward. Don't take it as an insult if I assume you're no better off than he was."

Again she smiled, and Mulder felt almost as arrested by the peculiarity that her smile actually intrigued him, as he was by the fact that she was three steps ahead of him and counting. She continued the talking for the both of them.

"My colleague Dr Daniel Jackson apologises that he couldn't come himself to meet you again, but we have him set up in a dig in South America at the moment, overlooking a very important and very rare Mayan find. You'll respect as an Agent that this is not public knowledge yet owing to the delicate political circumstances that ever arise whenever such digs are discovered."

The speech was eerily well rehearsed. He had a hunch that she knew he knew this. He also believed she knew there wasn't a damn thing he could say to her that would put her off her tracks.

"He would also like to assure you that he is not dead and that I did not kill him. Here."

She pulled a small envelope from her back pocket and handed it to him. For a second he hesitated to take it, and then she smiled again encouragingly. He took it.

Inside was a photograph. Daniel Jackson, six years on from when Mulder had last seen him, now clean-shaven with floppy, combed hair hidden largely under a green bandana, wearing new glasses and smiling. The location – outdoors somewhere – was indistinct but the quality of the coloured photograph was modern. He was with her, Samantha Carter, and they were both wearing civilian clothes.

"Normally," she continued, as he stared hard at the print, "we wouldn't reveal so much. But we recognise you as an FBI Agent, in particular with a certain... reputation, and we respect your right to know of the well being of Daniel. In fact, asides from apologising, he expresses genuine regret that he couldn't come and meet you again himself. He remembers you well, and says he owes you lunch."

Mulder gave one last inspection of the background – green and leafy and looking a lot like Canada, and carefully put the photograph back in the envelope and tucked it away inside his overcoat. He only now realised he hadn't taken it off.

"I hope you don't think I'm being rude, but I'm a very busy woman and I have to leave now. They do great eggs Benedict here though."

She flashed him a positively wolfish smile and stood up, slipping on a denim jacket over a plain white shirt. Below she wore fading blue jeans and old brown cowboy boots. She was remarkably unremarkable, perfectly fitted to be one of the crowd.

She left a ten on the table and waved amiably before she swung out the door and into the rain. She was gone from his sight in seconds.

...

Scully wouldn't get the phone message until that night. She had dedicated the day to a little retail therapy and the most ludicrously expensive lunch she could justify to herself having.

_"Scully, it's me. I've booked you on the first flight out to Colorado Monday morning. Check your emails; I've forwarded the details for the motel where I'll meet you. See you tomorrow afternoon."_

_...  
_


	5. Chapter 4, California 1993

A.N: This chapter should have been much longer, covering two time periods of events from 1993 and the 'present' 1998. But there's only the 1993 stuff. It's still fun though.

...

_Chapter Four _

_California, 1993_

.

She regarded him by the end of the session with solemn admiration, and how he continued to lecture unperturbed over the cringe of the door, over the constant snap of auditorium chairs with dutiful pity, for he played well an old hand at the act of being a failing academic. On his very last word she was the last to leave. It might even have been an easy thing to do, to go wordlessly and disguised by the general abuse of the crowd, had she not thought at the very last second he'd waved to her...

_'Samantha Carter. Come with us, please. You've been requested an audience with General West in Colorado.'_

Three months ago she would have looked back. Three months ago she would not have believed one iota of his whole premise, but she would have asked him out for coffee.

Three months ago she hadn't been trying to crack the code for the gateway to the universe.

'–_and we'd also like you to meet Catherine Langford, whose father originally found—' _

She carried her notes neatly under the crux of one arm as she headed back outside, notes that were worth the end of her career if they were to be discovered and believed by public consent. Or even by the man whose name and work were their title. Catherine Langford would be the one to receive the notes almost directly and exclusively and from there Samantha Carter's involvement with Daniel Jackson would cease. Her promotion to Captain was indirectly reliant on it.

In the end the day outside had managed to worm away from a dank, cloudy start to a cool, plain blue brightness of early afternoon. Many of the men from the lecture lingered on the university's courtyard stairs, laughing and disagreeing at the expense of the man who had academically serenaded them for the better part of two hours. Sam ignored them with grim satisfaction knowing that the frightening truth would never be theirs; that Dr Jackson understood and lustred for what these men could only hope at best to be a nightmare of their frigid, fixed realities.

_ "—of course we'll only be sending the best field officers through once we're able to operate the 'gate; highly specialised men—"_

Something hit her across the shoulder suddenly and made her spin on her heels. The papers under her arm sprung up around her and scattered freely to the ground. Out of trained impulse Sam grabbed for her hip, for her sidearm. Until she remembered she'd been ordered to come unarmed, that she was at a university...

"Sorry! Oh God _look,_ you're papers, they're everywhere— I'm so bloody sorry!"

The voice was almost as startling as the hit. Strikingly foreign, indeed British, loud and quick, projecting from the fluster of a tweed-suited, sincere faced and at this very moment crouched below her knees man, who was making it his sole duty then and there to frantically scrabble for all the scattered papers strewn between their feet while blushing and half-grinning.

He stood up finally with an energetic bounce and with one sly sweep of his gaze took a look at and read from her notes.

"'_Doctor Jackson mentions several times key locations around Gaza that uncannily coincide with Doctor Langford's own co-ordinates'_—hey!"

With wild urgency Sam snatched the skewed bundle of papers back.

"Thank you," she said curtly, nodded, and walked around the strange gangly British man. A second later she was aware of a light shadow bobbing at her shoulder.

"So you were at Jackson's lecture as well? Interesting, I thought I might have remembered your face—"

"Can I _help_ you?" Sam stopped abruptly and turned on her new and highly unwelcome acquaintance with a hard, straight stare. A military brat stare.

"Actually, yes. How about coming with me for lunch?"

She blinked. Though she had been prepped for any situation involving a variety of urgencies, from conspiracy theorist terrorism to shadow organization kidnapping of her person and her work, Sam had not been prepared for being asked out on a date. The straightness of her stare wavered and an answer of some dignity and restraint tried to come to life from her throat, but not before she was once again interjected.

"I'm Colson by the way, sorry. Alec Colson. And I think I would very much like to discuss the best lecture I have attended in well over five years with the prettiest woman I've seen all morning."

...

He put a slice of cake down in front of her. Chocolate, cemented together in the middle with crisp white icing, decorated on top with whole strawberries and powdered sugar; arrogantly the best and most expensive slice from off the whole counter. He'd bought himself a doughnut. Glazed and fat.

He was a comfortable man, sitting easy amongst the harassed bustle of the coffee shop. Expensively dressed but poorly presented, as if he'd been travelling long haul prior to being here and had had no time to smoothen out. His shirt was wrinkled and his shoes most likely European and well worn. His watch alone could easily have cost more than Sam would wish to be paid in a month and it hung loose around his tanned wrist.

His name was Alec Colson, and he was a fanatic. Sam had begun in equal parts to like and distrust him. Or perhaps it would be easier to say she was unwillingly intrigued.

"So, just between you and me," he said once they both had cake and coffee before them, leaning over the table with his arms folded in front of him, "are you here to kidnap Daniel Jackson and rob his ideas?"

A small glint in his flagrant eyes told her he was only half-joking. But Sam laughed lightly, (quite the actress when the cause called for it) and took a bite of the cake.

"Are you?" she countered, pointing her fork at him, smiling, still intrigued, still sussing him. Business man, Oxford educated but self-made; his visit to Dr Jackson's lecture was neither officially business nor officially academic. Rich man's hobby, a conspiracy nut perhaps, with nice hair...

"I'm something of a... a conspiracy nut, you might call it. Self confessed," he shrugged, smiling coyly, leaning back again. "You don't hear lectures like that every day and you certainly don't see men like Doctor Jackson by the dozen. I assumed you would agree, which is why I bought you a bit of the nicest cake."

Again he flashed a positively canine smile, and once more Sam felt a little hitch in her chest. But if she showed it, he was modest enough to ignore it.

"It was an interesting talk," she agreed, carefully. "But I think what's more relevant to appreciate is the conviction with which he speaks of his beliefs and his ideas, rather than what he's actually saying. I mean, come on, you don't really believe the ideas themselves, do you?"

Colson's eyes flashed hard again. "Why not?"

She blinked. A dull buzz rang suddenly through her ears and for a second she felt every thread of sensibility she possessed being pulled hard enough to snap, just as if she might suddenly tell him everything. All the universal truths she had had to re-learn, all the secrete knowledge that she had been told was worth more than the price of her life, the lies and cover ups and frankness of the operation being run under the feet of the ordinary people, its military objectives and the possibility of threats from aliens and spaceships and wormholes and everything else that should only exist in the fancy of dreaming men. She wanted to scream to him, tell him to run, tell him to take her with her because she hadn't the want or will to cope with any of it.

And then she remembered, it was everything she'd ever dreamed for.

"The cake was lovely, Alec," she slid its remains away from her and stood up from the table. Colson frowned. "And it was good to talk. But, I have a flight to catch in five hours and a bag in my hotel room that's still not packed."

Sam slung her notes, now bagged, over her shoulder and spoke deliberately over Colson who could not understand the frankness of her departure, being not privy to the thoughts that had just ran through Sam's head.

"If we ever meet again, I owe you coffee and don't let me forget that. Enjoy the rest of your time in California – in fact you should try to meet up with Doctor Jackson! Sorry to rush, but goodbye."

Alec could say nothing, for once. People simply never turned his company down, as was the customary blessing and curse of rich men.

She left the state promptly five hours later with no kept record of her ever being there for Doctor Daniel Jackson's lecture in 1993.

Except for the photographs.


	6. Chapter 5, Colorado 1998

A.N: Finally, the two shall meet.

.

_Chapter Five_

_Colorado (1998)_

.

He could not place with coherent understanding both together the expression and the circumstance. For her brow was at the descending angle of a scowl and her mouth a tight line of resistant. Yet here they were together in Colorado, 'off the books' and 'for the sheer hell of it' – to speak all in bravado terms. He was happy, or at least content with what he was doing here, what purpose they had, what great mystery there lay at hand.

She threw a broken umbrella in his face.

"Mulder... make some coffee."

"Scully I—"

"And if you tell me you have none, then I'm going to have to kill you."

She dumped her bag on the floor, left the door unhinged behind her, shed her rain-drenched overcoat like a snake skin and discarded it on the floor with her bag; sat on the edge of Mulder's bed, then folded backwards and lay on it with all abandon.

"Mulder..."

From the kitchen (or the laminated corner of the room with a two-foot bar table nailed into the wall and a kettle and a cupboard filled with questionable stocks of bottled water and tea bags and foil wrapped butter cubes) Mulder stirred milk and sugar and coffee grains quietly together. He was excited, but not stupid.

"Mulder, it took me _four_ rain-soaked, wind-ploughed, overcrowded, misdirected, _re_directed hours longer than it should have done just to _drag_ myself from that cosy little basement office of ours out to here, to the Middle of US-Nowhere, capital city of What The Hell?"

The kettle boiled, the water steamed over his face as he poured, the door shut itself as a wind that she was sure had followed her all the way from Washington slammed it shut. Mulder grinned.

"Sounds like you spent four rehearsing that speech."

She threw a shoe at him this time. If she had been aiming he would have been wearing the shoe in his forehead.

"Here are my room keys," she dropped them on the mattress. "I'm not moving from this bed until I see a sky that isn't grey."

It was two o'clock in the morning, and it was raining hard.

"Can we at least compare notes and paint our toenails tonight?"

With a heavy, deliberate breath Scully righted herself and took the coffee from Mulder. And in that act the slate was wiped clean. Mulder pulled up a bar stool, threw a weighty case file on the bed with Scully and crossed his arms. He was in sweats and a t-shirt from the 80s judging by the wear, and partner or no partner intruding on his mattress, she knew he hadn't been planning to sleep a wink tonight.

"So who is she then?" Scully asked airily, pulling out the headshots of Mulder's new best friend from the case file.

"Samantha Carter. Captain in the Air Force; scientist at NASA; top class astrophysicists; PhD – in fact, I think she might even have the ability to read minds, bend steel with her bare hands, fly—"

"Mulder."

"Whoever, whatever she is Scully, she's too good. And she's off the record, the boys could barely muster her D.O.B never mind a solid military record. I mean for all her supposed credentials she's not even published in one journal, she's not given a single interview since she was awarded for her papers in college. There's no address, no associates, no funding linked to her name. But when I met her, she gave me this."

Mulder leaned over and swept a small envelope from the bedside table. Handing it to Scully, it contained the photograph of Mulder's new enigma with his old fleeting acquaintance, Daniel Jackson.

"Y' know, for once Scully, I'm speechless."

As was Scully, for a brief moment. Then she coughed, rolled her shoulders back.

"You _met_ her?"

But Mulder simply muttered on while staring into the middle distance, "Twenty-nine. PhD, Captain in the Air Force, NASA... Logged some flight time in the Gulf War, seven, eight years ago..."

"Mulder," Scully interjected more gently now, "I have to ask, obviously," and she waved the photograph back at him, "Why are we here? Asides from your sadly obvious attraction to this new wonder woman, what is there even here to solve? Here she is in this picture, with Doctor Jackson I presume, and you haven't given me any indication that you suspect the photo to be a fake, or then that your old friend Jackson is MIA anymore. I'm sorry he's been blowing you off for six years but maybe that's all it is? He got a job, got a girlfriend by the looks of it, his life moved on and in the process he forgot to ring and tell you that he was retiring as a conspirator."

She cocked her head onto her shoulder, eyes steady and reasonable.

Finally, after holding onto a rigorous silence in which he willed a non-existent argument to go his way (until it toppled in favour of Scully) Mulder got up, grabbed the keys from the bed to the other motel room and made stolidly for the door.

"Fine. Case closed: And let it never be known why Doctor Daniel Jackson spent the next six years blowing off Special Agent Fox Mulder's request for a continuing mutual league of harmless extra terrestrial fascination."

He turned away from the room and from his partner, threw on his slippers and his wind-breaker, opened the door, and came face to face with Daniel Jackson.

...

Jack O'Neill shook a finger at the motel door. He shifted the weight in his stance from one heel to the other, and back again. He gave Daniel a look that could have disarmed a Marine and the younger man winced, just slightly, under it.

Jack went to extremes in parallel relevancies; when he was being smart, and when he was pissed. There wasn't much for Jack to be smart about at that moment, as they stood a pair of cold and wet men in jeans and baseball caps and boots. They could have been casual-wear Witnesses.

Jack's waggling finger, the quip in his split eyebrow, the almost laser intense stare at the door and again with the practically sarcastic finger; the man was something of a time bomb. Except out here, in front of fellow government professionals, he wouldn't chance to lose it. No, glib outbursts and name calling were for Daniel in the locker room, for Carter in the briefing room if he was truly feeling cocky...

"Did I mention I don't like the FBI?"

Daniel's nose twitched and he pushed his glasses up patiently. "Yes, yes I think you did. Several times on the way over, in fact. Oh, and by the way, next time you can car pool with Teal'c."

For that Daniel took a severe scowl on the shoulder. Then Jack made a fist, knocked himself on the hip with it twice, and raised it at the door. It opened without him so much as laying a hair on the cheap wood.

All of a sudden there was the three of them, all staring back at each other with half-baked expressions coloured in several shades of 'what-the-hell?'

FBI Man made a sound first. A strange, cautious laugh. "Excuse me?" he asked, oddly, and pointed accusingly at Daniel's chest.

Daniel himself had had at least the privilege of knowing in advance who was going to greet him when the door opened.

"Agent Mulder," he extended his hand out in his most time honoured way of making peace, this archaeologist and self-made anthropologist's oldest gambit. For a moment little happened though but a breeze and a spattering of Colorado gutter water which fell from the rooftop and tediously down Jack's neck. A three-way stalemate of honest confusion and misguided pride.

Then a voice over Agent Mulder's shoulder.

"Doctor Jackson, I presume. Mulder, it's been six years and you thought the man was dead; why don't you invite him in?"

...

Jack, in rather a content and sudden decision, had decided not to like Mulder. Mulder, infamously one-minded in times of extreme fascination, had ignored the Colonel (not even aware yet that he was a Colonel) and cornered Daniel, and it was hard for the archaeologist to tell, with his only half-raised smile, whether the Special Agent was happy to see him...

"Still on the Campaign Trail Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel lifted his eyebrows, pushed his glasses further up his nose, felt the edge of the bed against the back of his knees as the Agent continued to peer at him with almost subdued disbelief.

"It's been six years, Doctor. The FBI were about to have you down as 'missing presumed dead'."

That was Jack's cue.

"Yeah, about that..."

And then, as he made to intercept between Daniel and Mulder, he spotted the case file on the bed, the essays and the photographs strewn from their envelopes. His attention was suddenly averted.

"Where did you get these?"

Daniel's hackles spiked across the back of his neck, as Jack slowly and deliberately lifted a black and white headshot. Underneath it was a small, coloured photograph, painfully familiar. Jack had taken that picture himself.

"Excuse me, but who are you?"

Jack caught the woman in his sights quickly as she spoke. She reminded him almost immediately and remarkably of Janet Fraiser; small, sharp and presumably relentless. Smarter than her partner, that much he'd assumed for himself as well.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill, US Air Force. And you only get to know that much because you're FBI. Now what the hell is this?"

Mulder laughed. It wasn't a kind sound. "If you're with him," he pointed almost accusingly at Daniel, "then I can only assumed you already know who _she_ is," and he pointed at the face of Sam Carter, taken by a source unknown. "Better than I do, anyway."

Jack very nearly rose to some sore temptations, but carefully instead he put the photograph down and took a step closer towards Mulder.

"I don't play tic-tac-toe so well, so I'm gonna straighten this out now, truthfully as I can because I don't think we have a whole lot of time to spare here.

"We know you met with Captain Carter yesterday morning to discuss the whereabouts of Daniel here."

Jack pointed a thumb Daniel's way and almost obediently he gave the room a small wave.

"We know what time you arrived at, what cafe you were both in, when you left, when Carter left. What we don't know is where Carter is now."

Scully stepped forward suddenly. "Excuse me? I'm sorry but we weren't aware the Captain was missing. Were we... Mulder?"

"What? No! Hey, yes we met yesterday. But I only got in contact because someone left me these files on my desk on Friday. It was the only lead I had to connect back to Jackson."

Jack stared dead at the Agent. "And that never struck you as kind of odd? That someone would leave headshots of a US Air Force Captain on your desk anonymously?"

Behind them all Scully sighed heavily. Mulder shrugged. "Not odd, no... Surprisingly usual, in fact, in my line of work."

"Which would be the X-Files."

Mulder spun his attention back on Daniel. "Yes. Who the hell _are_ you people?"

Jack snapped back, "Who the hell are you?"

"Jack," Daniel stayed him off with his hand held half up. "Okay, look, obviously everyone's a little... off balance at the moment. The motel serves 24-hour coffee downstairs. It might not be a bad idea to get out of a room designed to sleep only two."

Jack suddenly looked back and forth between Mulder and Scully with sly accusation. This, neither appreciated. Daniel shoved him out of the room before he was able to succeed in getting himself arrested.

...

She tripped as the blindfold came away. Pitched forward slightly but caught herself as the world focused again, none more familiar to her though than the darkness had been. It was an open parking lot under a bridge and a grey sky, and it was a man leaning against the side of a car, lighting up a cigarette.

"The surroundings do nothing to emphasis what an honour this meeting truly is, Captain Carter."

Instinct forced her to take a step back.

"For myself, of course. I know of very few people who I could introduce you to who would be intelligent enough to impress or honour you."

Sam looked around again, trying to absorb the absurdity of the moment, and the exact kind of danger she was in. The car park was really a wide, sunken valley of abandoned concrete rolled out under a deserted bridge where traffic no longer flowed from one empty expanse of fields to another. Off it and to the north ran a ravaged side road and a collection of industrial buildings; to the south lay unmarked yellow-grass desert. East to west and about half a mile away was the highway, although to hell if Sam knew which one. She couldn't even be sure they were still in Colorado State.

A slight breeze brought the scent of smoke curling under her nose and she sized up the man again whose operation, she had no doubt, this was. He was leaning against a black van with tinted windows, a highly suspicious vehicle by all accounts. Which she had allowed to roll up beside her on a bad corner and, in her arrogance, had continued to assume little threat from it even after men started hanging outside its sliding side door.

He might have been fifty, sixty, forty – with men who smoked she always found it hard to tell. He spoke like he was reading from a bad script and smiled like the criminally insane, but with more sophistication. He shared a look around with Sam and even seemed to enjoy the intervals of sunshine that shot briefly through the passing grey clouds. He wore a suit, a navy blue tie, his eyes were grey, his hair thin, his shoes Italian. No watch on, and this struck her, but only perhaps because now she was hyper-sensitive to every detail.

She knew she could outrun the bastard, and to where exactly didn't seem to matter at this moment, so long as it was away from him. But she would be her own greatest fool yet if she didn't reckon he was armed when she was not, and in failing to shoot her he could have his driver run her over.

"You know who I am," Sam finally spoke, calmly and directly as the smoking man tapped his cigarette and allowed the ashes to blow away in the wind. He half nodded.

"I do, and I don't. You are Doctor Captain Samantha Carter of the United States Air Force. You have a PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics. You moonlight for NASA. Your cat was called Shrödinger. You have a brother, Mark, and a father, Jacob, who until three months ago was dying of cancer. Despite his miraculous recovery however, Mark and his wife still lightly complain that the children do not get to see enough of their once estranged grandfather. Coincidently, your own neighbours say a similar thing of you. You inherited the house you barely reside in from your father as tragically your mother passed away some time—"

"Stop. That's enough."

The smoking man smiled. "No, it's not unfortunately. It's barely a crack in the surface really. There is far more to you than what can just be found on paper and by asking nosy neighbours. Your record is almost air-tight, for someone of your...calibre. But there are always cracks."

Sam folded her arms against another spiral of wind; in the past day or so she guessed they'd gone further north and perhaps west, if they hadn't been driving around in circles. She was hungry, cold. Annoyed. Nerves running like chicken-shit.

"Behind you," and the man nodded casually north, to the side road and the buildings along the horizon, "is a modest factory off-shoot of the growing Colson Industries. Just now it is managing production on spare-parts for its numerous upcoming satellite projects. Today, its C.E.O is visiting. I believe he is an old acquaintance of yours, though you may not remember by his name alone. However, we are also going to pay a visit."

Sam turned back to the smoking man. "Why?"

Again he smiled, slow and calm and wicked, as he lit a fresh cigarette.

"Because, my dear, there are always cracks."


End file.
